Survivors & Partners, Healing the Relationships of Sexual Abuse Survivors

By Paul Hansen

This book will help couples (or individuals) who are facing healing the effects of the wounds of childhood sexual abuse on their relationships. It provides both the survivor and the partner an in-depth understanding of the factors affecting each of them and offers a clear guide to working through the necessary steps and issues for healing.

A helpful guide for individuals, couples and for therapists facing theses issues.
Topics covered include:
ACCEPTING THE JOURNEY How to Recognize the Victim, Understand the Survivor, And Become the Thriver.
Understanding the Journey Toward Wholeness
DISCOVERING AND IDENTIFYING THE ABUSE: Effects on the Couple
THE STRUGGLE WITH DENIAL: Breaking through Denial
RUNNING AWAY BEHAVIOR: The Quest for Safety
COPING WITH ANGER
GRIEF: Healing the Losses for each person
HOW TO HANDLE SEX:: The Dilemma of Intimacy
WHO IS THE VICTIM? The Victimization of the Partner
HINTS FOR COUPLES IN THE HEALING PROCESS
Useful questionnaires to confirm an assessment of sexual abuse are included in the appendices and help understand some of the more confusing effects of the abuse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Hansen
• Release date: Dec 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465704368

Paul Hansen

Paul Hansen came into the faith in the Reformed tradition in his early 20’s. He attended Hope College and Western Theological Seminary as well as Western Michigan University, Kansas State, and the Institute for Worship Studies. He has been in ministry for nearly 40 years serving in various capacities in 7 different congregations currently Artesia First CRC in Calif. He has also taught Christianity and contemporary American Culture and Cross-Cultural Communication at Trinity Christian College.

Book preview

Survivors

&

Partners

Healing the

Relationships of

Sexual Abuse Survivors

by

PAUL A. HANSEN, Ph. D.

Review by Laura Davis

A positive, straightforward guide for couples. Written with clarity and insight by a partner who is also a skilled counselor. Survivors and Partners should give reassurance and guidance to all couples struggling to deal with the long-term effects of sexual abuse in their relationships. —Laura Davis, author of The Courage to Heal Workbook, Allies in Healing, and co-author of The Courage to Heal.

About the Author

Paul A. Hansen, Ph.D. is a therapist (now retired) who worked as a therapist with survivors of sexual abuse for twenty five years. He is also a partner of a survivor and a survivor himself.

Survivors & Partners

Healing the Relationships of Sexual Abuse Survivors

Copyright © 2011 by Paul A. Hansen

Smashwords Edition

Previously published in paper in1991. ISBN 0-9629960-4-1

by

Heron Hill Publishing

Please visit the author at http://paulhansenauthor.com

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This ebook is licensed for your personal reading only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. ACCEPTING THE JOURNEY How to Recognize the Victim, Understand the Survivor, And Become the Thriver

2. INTO THE WOODS! Understanding the Journey Toward Wholeness

3. DISCOVERING THE ABUSE Effects on the Couple

4. THE STRUGGLE WITH DENIAL

5. RUNNING AWAY The Quest for Safety

6. COPING WITH ANGER

7. GRIEF Healing the Loss

8. SEX The Dilemma of Intimacy

9. WHO IS THE VICTIM? The Victimization of the Partner

10. HINTS FOR COUPLES IN THE HEALING PROCESS

APPENDIX 1: Indicators of Child Sexual Molestation

APPENDIX 2 Troubling Mental Experiences as Indicators of Child Sexual Molestation

APPENDIX 3 Twenty-four Stages of Growth For Survivors of Incest

APPENDIX 4 Flashbacks! What They Are and How to Handle Them

APPENDIX 5 How Adult Survivors of Incest Function in a Relationship

APPENDIX 6 How Stages of Healing Affect Relationships

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge my wife, Mimi Farrelly, without whom this book would not have been written. She has been not only my fellow journeyer through this difficult experience but a support along the way and in addition provided copy editing which was invaluable. Many others read early versions of the book and provided helpful suggestions, copy editing and encouragement, including Clyde Reid, Bruce Fisher, Claudia Previn, Katie Klinger, and Trish Caetano. Barbara Ciletti provided the editorial expertise to help polish the manuscript for its final form. I also want to acknowledge the many women and men, individuals and couples who have been participants in our HEALING THE WOUNDS OF ABUSE workshops, who shared with us their pain, their fears, and their hopes, as well as their statements which spice the text of this book. Central in my learning about this subject have been the many courageous clients who have chosen to work with me in therapy as they set out to heal their painful wounds of sexual abuse. They have been my profound teachers. Lastly, I want to acknowledge my daughter Jori, who seemed somehow to understand at her tender age of 4 & 5, in 1991, when her daddy was at his desk in front of the computer, to come in with hugs of encouragement and then allow him to continue. (She is now 25 as of this eBook revision.) This book was first published in 1991 as a paperback book. Paper copies are available from the author. ( http://paulhansenauthor.com) or from Amazon.

Cover design: Barbara J. Ciletti

Disclaimer

This book is designed to provide information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in providing psychological or professional services through this medium. If such professional advice or service is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The purpose of this manual is to educate, inform and enlighten those persons who may have experienced the trauma of childhood sexual abuse and their partners, or who may be working with such individuals professionally. The author and Heron Hill Publishing shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

Introduction

The information you are about to read is authentic. The material comes from my own experience as a partner of a sexual abuse survivor, from the experience of those who have been participants in our workshop: HEALING THE WOUNDS OF ABUSE FOR COUPLES, (see Appendix 7) and from the experiences of those courageous people who have been my clients in psychotherapy as they have worked and fought to heal the wounds of their early childhood sexual abuse. I have not edited the client's and participant's quotations. They include the expletives they used to express their pain. This is a book for and about real people . . . all of us who are survivors and partners.

In 1987 my wife Mimi and I began conducting workshops on Healing the Wounds of Abuse for Couples (see appendices for more information) in which one of the partners was abused sexually or physically as a child. We were both personally and professionally well acquainted with the effects of child abuse and held a sincere desire to utilize our own learning in support of other couples who needed to triumph over past wounds. We decided we wanted to share the growth and learning we had achieved. The couples who have participated have found this to be enormously helpful. Just surviving as a couple these days is a real triumph in and of itself! As far as we could ascertain, no one else out there was doing this kind of work. In addition, despite a variety of treatment options for survivors, relatively little was being offered for a the survivor's primary partner or for their relationships.

Although the primary participants in our workshops have been couples, we also have had a few people come alone, some of whom are therapists. Some participants fit into both categories, being survivors or partners, and are also therapists who treat sexual abuse. Both my wife and I fit into that classification. She is an art therapist working with adults and children. I am a psychotherapist working primarily with adults.

The irony of all this is that in mid-1989 at age 52, in the midst of writing of this book, I made the shocking discovery that I too was a survivor of sexual abuse. I now have a much deeper and more authentic understanding of the kinds of feelings that the survivor goes through in the healing process. It has been sobering for my wife to find herself from time to time now in those double-binds that all partners experience, forced to shift from the role of survivor to partner.

I have chosen to use the term survivor rather than victim to identify the person who was sexually abused. As Laura Davis says in her book, Courage to Heal, You have already survived the worst part, the abuse itself. I think it is important for both the survivor and the partner to begin to identify with this term, for it is a term of empowerment and advocacy. See yourselves as survivors. You have had your own holocaust. You are survivors.

I have written primarily from the perspective of the survivor being the female in the relationship and the partner being male. (Thus I have written the material using she for the survivor and he for the partner, rather than the more cumbersome she/he approach.) The most common experience for couples in our culture is that of the female survivor with a male partner. Current research shows that one out of every four women was sexually abused before the age of eighteen. However, we are also realizing that many men, as I have so painfully learned, were sexually abused as children as well. That research shows the incidence is one of seven for males. Whether male or female, the effects of abuse on a relationship are not substantially different. If you are the male survivor or female partner, I trust you can make that translation as you read.

Since I sometimes use the term partner to refer to the female survivor in the relationship, I will endeavor to capitalize the word Partner when I am referring to the Partner of the survivor. For readers who are in a relationship where both members are of the same gender, the terms survivor and Partner will be helpful. Gay and lesbian couples in our workshops have found that the effects of abuse on their relationships are essentially the same as those experienced by heterosexual couples.

I have included parts of our own personal story in this book. Although we feel publicly vulnerable in sharing our story, we do it hoping it will help you with your healing. We are not proud of our wounds, but we are proud of the healing process, as individuals and as a couple. This material has been printed in italics for easy comprehension. This book is written to provide you with hope and encouragement, whether you are in the process of healing your own wounds of abuse, or helping others to heal. Good luck!

Chapter 1

ACCEPTING THE JOURNEY

I am claiming my power to succeed, to be visible, to look sensuous in public, to be beautiful and not hide or throw up!

A WOMAN SURVIVOR.

One of the most profound transformations possible in the human arena of growth can take place with the survivor of incest. This is the two-stage shift in consciousness, moving from being a victim to being a survivor, and then from survivor to thriver. What does this mean? And, how does such growth affect the survivor's primary relationship?

When a perpetrator forces a child into sexual experiences that are inappropriate for him or her, that child is a victim in every sense of the word. The child seldom experiences the power needed to say no, to resist the perpetrator, and to consequently affect the course of her life. To make sense of what is happening to her, to anchor her experience in a reasonable world, she may begin to make mental alterations of her view of reality. For instance, she may begin to believe that she deserves the abuse. She may believe that she is bad, and that her experience is some sort of punishment for something she has done wrong (a classic belief of the victim state). In some of the most severe cases of sexual abuse, she may develop alternate personalities in an effort to survive the experience